Austin Aries on his admiration for Bobby Heenan

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Austin Aries was interviewed by Ain’t It Cool News. Here he talks about his admiration for Bobby Heenan as a being a top performer in the business:

WR: Now being that you mentioned managers being a lost art form, I remember as a kid watching Bobby Heenan and I think as I grew up I wanted to be Bobby Heenan more than I did one of the wrestlers in the matches. The guy just blew me away with how entertaining he was and as I got older and learned to appreciate what he was actually doing as an artist and in the background with his performance it just still amazes me how good he was. It really is a lost art, the whole idea of having a good manager is gone and it’s sad that we don’t have that anymore.

AA: I’ve always said that in my opinion, Bobby Heenan is in the top 10 performers of all time. You could even go top 5 depending on who you’d want to include. For me, he’s one of my favorite performers in the history of wrestling, no question. The guy could do everything and he could do it better than the guy he was managing most of the time. That’s what people don’t realize. If you go back and watch when he was actually wrestling, the guy could go in the ring. He could move. He was really skilled and a really special talent and also smart enough to understand that you can’t try to outshine the guys you’re managing and he picked their spots and he picked them so well. He made so much money for a lot of guys who maybe wouldn’t have made that money without him, because the feud in the 80s was Hulk Hogan vs Bobby Heenan. It was never about Hogan vs. any certain person it was whoever was in Heenan’s stable. So maybe if the right character came along, and, who knows, maybe I’m that guy that will transition out of being an in ring guy in the next decade or so and find myself in that position. I would love the type of opportunity to bring all the types of things that Bobby Heenan brought to the table into the world of professional wrestling